dear
face grow white with stabbing anguish. The girl's throat filled with
sobs, and she suddenly remembered something Theodore had once said to
her.

"If you want anything, child, just play for it."

And she wanted the life of her cobbler, the man who had taken her,
with such generosity, into his heart and meagre home. She slipped the
fiddle from the case and stooped and whispered in Bobbie's ear:

"Grab the back of my dress, dearie, and don't let go!"

She moved into the aisle, making ready to start on her life mission.
She lifted the bow, and with a long sweep, drew an intense minor note
from the strings. A sea of faces swung in her direction. Jinnie forgot
every one but the cobbler--she was playing for his life--improvising
on the fiddle strings a wild, pleading, imploring melody. On and on
she went, with Blind Bobbie, in trembling confusion, clinging to her
skirts, and Happy Pete with sagging head at their heels. At the first
sound of the fiddle Lafe tried to rise, and did rise. He stood for a
moment on his shaking legs, and there, to the amazement of the gaping
crowd of his townsfolk, he swayed to and fro, watching and listening
as the wonderful music filled and thrilled through the room.

A heavenly light shone on the wrinkled face.

Jordan Morse got to his feet, chalk white. Molly the Merry was looking
at Jinnie as if she saw a ghost.

The onlookers saw Lafe's unsteady steps as he tottered toward the
lovely girl and blind child. When he was within touching distance, she
put the instrument and bow under one arm and took Lafe's hand in hers.
Her voice rang out like the tone of a bell.

"I've come for you, Lafe. I've come to take you back."

Then Molly's eyes dropped from Jinnie to the boy, and a cry broke from
her. Before her was the child for whom, in spite of the evidence of
her smiling lips, she had truly mourned. The wan, blind face was
turned upward, the golden hair lying in damp curls on the lovely head.
Spontaneously the woman reached forward and took the little hand in
hers. All the mother within her leaped up, like a brilliant flash of
lightning.

"My baby!" was all she said; and Bobbie, white, trembling and
palpitating, cried in a weird, high voice:

"I've found my mother!"

Then Jordan Morse understood. The hot blood was tearing to his ear
drums. The blind boy he had persecuted and tortured, the boy he had
made suffer, was his own son. That wonderful quality in the man, the
fatherhood wi